"Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad."
- Salvador Dal¡

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.
- Pablo Picasso

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Lindsay Goodwin

It’s always interesting to look at the particular subject matter that artists find compelling. Some look to traditional subjects and perhaps put them into focus with their own point of view, others look for unique subjects, or variations and twists on traditional themes.

Lindsay Goodwin is a young painter from California, who lived in Paris and travelled in Europe before returning to the U.S., who has a chosen to focus on restaurant interiors as subjects for her colorful, painterly images.

It makes a lot of sense in terms of a choice of subject; restaurant interiors are intentionally designed to be interesting, welcoming and often utilize carefully chosen, attractive colors. In addition, restaurant interiors are arrayed with visually appealing objects like glassware, vases and flower arrangements.

The subject also offers quite a range, from ornate and elaborate formal dining rooms to intimate bistros and informal bed and breakfast tables, as well as a range of location and nationality. (The image at top is of the restaurant in a hotel in Crillon le Brave in Provence, France; home to another artist I’ve written about on Lines and Colors, Julian Merrow-Smith).

Goodwin’s subject matter also extends to related subject matter like hotels, opera houses and classic theaters, and includes dining rooms in private homes. There are also figurative and portrait pieces, and somewhat more traditional building exteriors.

Lindsay: my friends and I are at the Pasadena Art Club and two of us choose your painting of the Centennial Gala as our favorite. Your lighting is superb. We have also traveled together in Europe and recognize and love the types of interiors you paint. I will follow your work and perhaps some day can afford to purchase your work. Joanne Kennedy

There is a kind of debate going on in her work, if I ignore the high level of polish: 1. To indulge the subject with a high degree of technicalism, or 2. To immediately choose a category that extends the variety of subject matter.

I myself find an impulsivity to choose a wide variety of subjects, even to the point of abstracting the subject out of the painting. General themes such as architecture and curvature are the common theme between this woman’s work and mine.

If glasses break, it becomes my importunity (“urge” / exploration) to represent fractures, fissures, and ‘glyphs’ (sunken designs) in abstracta, eliminating the need for the stem of the glass, the need for a setting, indeed the urge for anything besides composition. The perversities I encounter are in my own mind, not in the subject. Thus, if everything is perverse, I can still improve myself. For this woman, if there is something wrong with restaurants in general, there will be no room to improve. I suspect that is what she will realize—the human figure and representation becomes perverse, pornographic, rather than having the cachet of abstraction.